Design Optimization of Scanning Resistive Microscopy (SRM) Probe for Spatial Resolution Improvement

We suggest a new design of resistive probe (RP) for spatial resolution improvement by Si tip shape control. The major change of the new design is wedge-like probe formation rather than pyramidal shape, which results in the reduced removal of high doped volume near the slanting surface of probe. Therefore, we could reduce spatial resolution deterioration mainly due to low doped volume of the sloped surface. The newly designed resistive probe (RP) showed about 40 nm transition (which is assumed to be a distance taken signal rising from 10% to 90% of saturation level) in bit writing and reading experiment on the real ferroelectric media, which is a few times improvement compared to the original one.